


Midnight

by Syntax



Category: DragonFable (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Meet-Cute, Summoning Circles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 03:03:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21264020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: When she'd first moved into town a few months ago looking for old buildings to turn into a bed and breakfast, it had taken all of a week to find the perfect place for her. Cozy, lots of open space, ample windows to provide natural lighting, and fairly well maintained. It was cheap too, which the real estate agent told her was because this particular building had some minor paranormal activity reported in the past.Minor. Oh how Serenity wished it was just minor.





	Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> i've been trying to work towards 50k words by halloween, and with this fic, i've done it! i just completed a big project and none of my drafts seemed appealing, so i decided to do a fun thing with my favorite idiots.
> 
> happy halloween!

In about three minutes the clock would strike midnight. Which meant that Serenity had about three minutes to decide whether or not to actually go through with this nonsense.

When she'd first moved into town a few months ago looking for old buildings to turn into a bed and breakfast, it had taken all of a week to find the perfect place for her. Cozy, lots of open space, ample windows to provide natural lighting, and fairly well maintained considering its age. It was cheap too, which the real estate agent told her was because this particular building had some minor paranormal activity reported in the past.

Minor. Oh how Serenity wished it was just _minor._

Sure, things had _started_ minor. Small items mysteriously going missing while the moving crew was bringing in and assembling furniture, like nuts or screwdrivers or keys, only to mysteriously end up in a secret compartment built into the stairwell a day or two later. Lights that had no reason to flicker somehow flickered at the same time every day. Certain rooms of the building were always a little bit chillier than the other ones, with no clear reason why.

Annoying little quirks, yes, but still just quirks that wouldn't do much to harm her fledgling business. Serenity opened her bed and breakfast to modest success a few weeks after renovations had gone underway and happily noted that whatever was messing around with the building seemed to have quieted down finally.

Then it came back, and then things had gotten progressively worse.

Bigger objects went missing, even after she set up a lost and found in the stairwell where everything would have ended up anyways. More rooms started getting cold, and they started getting colder. Guests started reporting a feeling of being watched. Guests started complaining. Guests started asking for their money back.

Then someone almost fell down the stairs after an invisible force pushed them, and Serenity couldn't take it anymore.

Which was why she was sitting here in the attic, surrounded by a mess of candles and staring at a crude summoning circle she'd found on the internet and drawn on the floor in lipstick. Some of the websites she'd found that claimed you could use their rituals to summon ghosts said that the circle needed to be drawn in blood, others said they just needed to be drawn, and others still insisted that they needed to be drawn with something that has an emotional connection to the summoner.

So she compromised and got her favorite stick of blood red lipstick and told herself that it would probably be easier to clean out than than the real thing. It didn't smell as strongly as blood did either, which was good news in case this somehow managed to work.

It probably wasn't going to, but at least she could say she tried.

Two minutes to midnight.

Serenity thumbed the plastic clip holding her printed-out instructions together. This was _silly_, honestly. Ghosts weren't real, and ghost summoning _especially_ wasn't real. It was more likely that she had some kind of infestation in the walls, or issues with the radiators, or paranoid guests. This was an _old_ house after all. There was no telling what secrets it might have had. For all she knew the "hauntings" were actually caused by someone or something living in some secret room she hadn't found yet.

But...

The thing about ghosts was that even if you knew they weren't real, they still had a way of hanging in the back of your mind and making you think _oh, but what if—?_ over and over and over again. There had been times when Serenity was completely alone in a room and still felt like someone was watching her. When it was already in the middle of the day and she felt like she needed to turn the lights on. When the hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she could swear she wasn't alone.

All perfectly rational things that could be explained by a fear of the "what if", really. And all perfectly rational things that had factored into her irrational decision to look up summoning circles online.

One minute to midnight.

She flipped through her instructions and took a breath.

"Oh spirit," Serenity said, grateful to the empty rooms underneath her for blocking out how ridiculous she must sound, "Show yourself now to me, at this time, at this place, in this hour of my need. I wish to speak with you, spirit, and learn what causes you such ills, for your sorrow brings me sorrow, and I cannot carry on. Show yourself to me, spirit, before the night is done."

Her clock chimed midnight. Serenity counted the chimes out with a sense of odd trepidation.

Nothing happened.

She lowered her instructions with a bemused expression. Sure, this wasn't actually going to work, but when she was reading the incantation it'd almost felt like—

Every single on of her candles went out at once, causing Serenity to bite back a shriek as she toppled down to the floor.

The attic was swallowed in complete darkness. There weren't any windows in this part of the old house, so she didn't have the luxury of moonlight shining in to light her way. Which, now that she thought of it, begged the question of _how_ all the candles went out if there was no way for a sudden draft to blow in?

She didn't have much time to ponder how a draft could snuff out all the candles at once before one by one they started lighting up again. This time with a distinctly red flame rather than the normal yellow-orange.

And this time illuminating the shape of another person in the attic with her, standing right where she'd drawn her lipstick circle. Another person that was very tall, and very broad-shouldered, and very much had not been there before. They moved from the circle and suddenly Serenity was face to face with a man she had never seen before in her life. She could see red hair and red eyes that seemed to glow, paired with pale skin and clothing that looked like it had to have been from decades, if not centuries in the past.

But what really unsettled her about the man, was that she could faintly see the outline of the attic's support beams through when she looked at him.

"So," the man said, voice deep and echoing with some ethereal quality, "I take it _you're_ the one who bought my house?"

Oh, Serenity thought as she looked up at the ghost she'd summoned, it worked.

Oh _no_, she thought next. Oh no he's _hot._


End file.
